ON Thursday, November 29, Pervez Musharraf was sworn in for a new five-year term as the President of Pakistan. The day before, the general tearfully handed over command of the army to his handpicked successor, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. Musharraf now claims he will also end the state of emergency on December 16.
Chasing a Waterfall
19 Oct
COOKIES for the survivors!” yelled Nelson cheerfully as we climbed up a muddy slope made slippery by the driving tropical rain. It was not the right sentiment to warm the hearts of the dozen or so tourists about to voluntarily zip from treetop to treetop 400ft above the ground.
Debating Ahmadinejad at Columbia
25 Sep
The New York Daily News cover when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to New York in 2007
A TALL man with white hair, wearing a US-flag print shirt and pants, patrolled the sidewalk at 116th and Broadway. He waved a huge American flag as he marched, in movements that were nearly metronomic in their consistency. Stacks of brochures sat on a bare and rickety table, waiting to be handed out to anyone who didn’t look away quickly enough. Bystanders stared.
I hadn’t been back to my former school almost since I graduated. Returning as an alumna of the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), the school that sponsored Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s talk here on Monday, I felt the puff of pride that Columbia had not backed down in the face of media pressure. I also felt just a little bit cheated that it was happening now, when I was attending as an outsider, rather than the first time his talk had been announced, in 2006, when I was still a sleep-deprived student.
Why Rasika Mathur is One Funny Woman
21 Aug
Rasika Mathur
NILAM Auntie breaks into any conversation with desi comic Rasika Mathur. Sometimes it’s in the form of a mischievous cackle; sometimes it’s in the ‘dearie’ tacked onto the end of a sentence; and sometimes it’s a facial expression that so transforms Mathur’s face that the watcher doesn’t even see the 30-year-old petite Indian-American in a T-shirt and khaki capris on the edge of her seat.
Running to Stand Still
19 May
People riding the escalors at Mid-Levels, Hong Kong
I APOLOGIZE for the mess,” the owner of OPT Art Gallery says with a smile. She is wearing a loose white shirt and a comfortable air that match the ambience of the small space where she is showing the work of Taiwanese artist Chiou Jyian-Ren. Middle-aged and British, she is chatty and charmingly harried and has just finished holding a drawing class in the gallery’s central space. “I’ve been too lazy to clean up,” she confesses.
Travelogues
-
Watercolour Island
Belize is a land smooth and green, like a bedsheet tugged flat, with an embroidery of palm trees that only wrinkle and bump the landscape.
-
Cape Town | Shark-Struck
When confronted by great white sharks a few feet away from our boat, jaws dropped open and a collective “wow” swept the onlookers. We forgot everything we had seen in scary movies and on Discovery Channel’s Shark Week and just stared.
-
Snake in the grass
One of the seven wonders of the modern world, the limestone structure that is the Kukulcán pyramid looms at the centre of the vast public ground in Chichén Itzá, the ancient Mayan city in the heartland of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.
-
A walk on the wild side
Most rapids seemed to be named after people who had died or were rescued at the last minute from a terrible fate. Maybe someone long ago had thought that it would add to the thrill of rafting down the river, but to me it seemed rather depressing. I shivered in the sunlight.
-
Chasing a Waterfall
“Cookies for the survivors!” yelled Nelson cheerfully as we climbed up a muddy slope made slippery by the driving tropical rain. It was not the right sentiment to warm the hearts of the dozen or so tourists about to voluntarily zip from treetop to treetop 400ft above the ground.
EST / IST 